HR急需一次大革命

    我们大多数人都可以轻而易举地举出几个下面这样的例子，有些公司未能全力以赴抓住重大的发展机遇【比如英特尔（Intel）之于移动设备芯片】，原有业务难以为继但却拖延不决【比如柯达（Kodak）之于数字摄影】，难以割舍钟爱但日渐衰亡的策略【比如通用汽车（General Motors）之于过于庞大的品牌组合】。我遇到过的大多数战略惯性案例中，人力资源(HR)部门并不是罪魁祸首，但也不是推动变革的最强大力量。

    我们与英国特许人事和发展协会(CIPD)的朋友们发起了一项在线问题解答活动，我们相信HR能在加强公司适应变革方面起到非常积极的作用。

    我一直喜爱拉尔夫•沃尔多•爱默生的这句名言：“事物总是有两方面——过去和将来，静与动。”问题是，HR部门属于哪一方？假设拿下面这个问题来问贵公司里的每个人：

    下面两种描述哪一种能最准确地描述贵公司的HR部门？

    1.HR是促进变革的强大力量。

    2.HR是变革的主要阻碍。

    如果贵公司有90%以上的员工都选择1，无疑是最理想的结果。但我怀疑如果你今天进行这项调查，不太可能会是这样的结果。我们首先需要明确一点，我们试图要建立的是什么样的组织？

    我所说的策略适应性不同于咨询界人士和商界大佬常常谈到的经营灵活性。经营灵活性意味着能在现有商业模式的框架下，对需求变化和客户偏好做出迅速反应。体现经营灵活性的一个典型案例是大众集团（Volkswagen Group）的新MQB(模块化横向矩阵)生产策略。 通过MQB架构，大众集团实现了在少量平台上生产众多品牌车型(奥迪,西雅特,斯柯达和VW)的目标。

    相比之下，策略适应性指的是一家公司重塑自身业务理念的能力。比如，我们都体验过亚马逊(Amazon)的经营灵活性——它能从几万、几十万库存单位中快速提取出每位客户的订单产品，一两天之内就能送到。但谈到策略适应性，亚马逊也是一个值得研究的案例。亚马逊在短短这些年的历史中已经经历了从图书销售网站到在线零售平台，再到数字媒体巨头的转型，最近又成为了云计算领域的领先者。

    亚马逊非常独特的一点在于它商业模式的变革并不是因为迫于危机。通常，重大的策略转变都是受到财务危机或连年回报率低迷的推动。大企业中深层变革的发生往往类似于治理不善的独裁政权——难得一见，姗姗来迟，无法遏制；而且原因也相似——从上至下的权力架构抑制了从下至上的变革。很多时候，等到一个问题变得大到足以引起CEO注意时，不管是机会、还是威胁，要想行动都已为时太晚，只能被动应对。等到谷歌(Google)高层惊觉必须认真对待社交媒体时，Facebook早已建立起了近乎无法超越的领先地位。绝大多数企业“变革”计划都是“追赶”计划。

    Most of us have no trouble coming up with examples of companies that failed to mobilize around a major new opportunity (Intel (INTC) and chips for mobile devices), or procrastinated when confronted with a wrenching discontinuity (Kodak and digital photography), or struggled to let go of a beloved but dying strategy (General Motors (GM) and its bloated brand portfolio). In most of the cases of strategic inertia I've come across, HR wasn't the primary culprit, but neither was it a powerful force for change.

    We've launched a hackathon with our friends at CIPD because we believe HR can play a hugely positive role in helping companies to become adaptable at their core.

    I've always loved this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "There are always two parties -- the party of the past and the party of the future, the establishment and the movement." The question is, to which party does the HR function belong? Imagine posing the following survey question to everyone in your company:

    Which of these two statements most accurately describes the HR function in this organization?

    1. HR is a powerful catalyst for change.

    2. HR is a major impediment to change.

    Ideally, more than 90% of your associates would pick statement No. 1, but I suspect this might not be the case if you ran the survey today. Let's first get clear about the sort of organizations we are trying to build.

    I like to make a distinction between what consultants and business types call operational agility and strategic adaptability. Operational agility implies an ability to respond quickly to shifts in demand or customer preference within the boundaries of an existing business model. A great example of an initiative focused on agility would be Volkswagen Group's new MQB manufacturing strategy. (Translated into English, Modularer Querbaukasten means Modular Transverse Matrix.) The MQB architecture allows a wide range of vehicles (Audis, Seats, Skodas and VWs) to be produced on a small number of platforms.

    Strategic adaptability, by contrast, refers to a company's capacity to reconfigure its underlying business concept. To take an example, we've all experienced Amazon's operational agility -- it's ability to rapidly assemble our unique order from tens of thousands of SKUs and deliver it to us in day or two. But Amazon is also a case study in strategic adaptability. During its brief history, it has morphed from a web-based bookseller, to an online retail platform, to a digital media powerhouse and, most recently, to a leader in cloud computing.

    Amazon (AMZN) is rather unique in that it has changed its business model in the absence of a crisis. Usually, major strategic shifts are driven by a financial meltdown, or years of substandard returns. Deep change in big companies usually happens the same way it happens in poorly governed dictatorships -- infrequently, belated, and convulsively; and for the same reason -- a top-down authority structure frustrates bottom-up change. All too often, by the time an issue gets big enough to attract the CEO's attention, whether an opportunity or a threat, it's too late to do anything but react. By the time Google's (GOOG) top brass roused themselves to do something serious about social media, Facebook (FB) had already built a nearly insurmountable lead. The vast majority of corporate "change" programs are "catch-up" programs.